Muslims in Interwar Europe
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Muslims in Interwar Europe Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> Muslim Minorities Editorial Board Jørgen S. Nielsen (University of Copenhagen) Aminah McCloud (DePaul University, Chicago) Jörn Thielmann (Erlangen University) VOLUME 17 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/mumi Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> Muslims in Interwar Europe A Transcultural Historical Perspective Edited by Bekim Agai Umar Ryad Mehdi Sajid leiden | boston Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License, which permits any non-commer- cial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: European Muslim Congress, 1935. Family Archive, Mohammed Ali van Beetem; Naaldwijk—The Netherlands. With gratitude to his grandson for giving access to the papers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Muslims in interwar Europe : a transcultural historical perspective / edited by Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad, Mehdi Sajid. pages cm. -- (Muslim minorities ; v. 17) Includes index. ISBN 978-90-04-28783-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-30197-9 (e-book) 1. Muslims--Europe-- History. 2. Islam--Europe--History. 3. Europe--Ethnic relations. 4. Europe--History--1918-1945. I. Agai, Bekim. II. Ryad, Umar. III. Sajid, Mehdi. BP65.A1M87 2016 297.094’09042--dc23 2015028931 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1570-7571 isbn 978-90-04-28783-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30197-9 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by the Editor and Authors. This work is published by Koninklijke Brill nv. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures viii 1 Introduction: Towards a Trans-Cultural History of Muslims in Interwar Europe 1 Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid 2 In Search of Religious Modernity: Conversion to Islam in Interwar Berlin 18 Gerdien Jonker 3 Salafiyya, Ahmadiyya, and European Converts to Islam in the Interwar Period 47 Umar Ryad 4 Conversion of European Intellectuals to Islam: The Case of Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje alias ʿAbd al-Ghaffār 88 Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld 5 Muslim Bodies in the Metropole: Social Assistance and “Religious” Practice in Interwar Paris 105 Naomi Davidson 6 Indonesian Islam in Interwar Europe: Muslim Organizations in the Netherlands and Beyond 125 Klaas Stutje 7 Moros y Cristianos: Religious Aspects of the Participation of Moroccan Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) 151 Ali Al Tuma 8 Muslims of Interwar Lithuania: The Predicament of a Torn Autochthonous Ethno-Confessional Community 178 Egdūnas Račius Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> vi contents 9 Transnational Life in Multicultural Space: Azerbaijani and Tatar Discourses in Interwar Europe 205 Zaur Gasimov and Wiebke Bachmann Index 225 Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> Acknowledgements We would like to deeply thank the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFB), the BMBF research project “Europa von außen gesehen” at the University of Bonn (2010-2014) and the Leiden University Centre of Islam and Society (LUCIS) for their generosity and financial support to organize the international conference “Islam in Interwar Europe and European Cultural History” at the University of Leiden (13–15 September 2012). Special thanks are due to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFB) for funding this publication and facilitating it in Open Access. We should also express our grati- tude to the European Research Council for funding the project “Neither visi- tors, nor colonial victims: Muslims in Interwar Europe and European Trans-cultural History,” currently conducted under the supervision of Umar Ryad at Utrecht University—The Netherlands (2014–2019). Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> List of Figures 1.1 European Muslim Congress, 1935 2 2.1 Hugo Hamid Marcus (1929) 37 2.2 Rolf Umar Ehrenfels (1926) 37 2.3 Faruq H. Fischer (1934) 37 3.1 Sheikh Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935) in his Al-Manār Office in Cairo 52 3.2 Id-ul-Fitr day at Woking, 10 July 1918 58 3.3 Muslim group at the Woking Mosque 62 3.4 al-Fatḥ 10, no. 476 80 6.1 A Muslim Marriage in the City Hall of the Hague 1935 146 6.2 Van Beetem and Indonesian Students in Cairo 1935 147 7.1 Granada Muslim cemetery 175 8.1 Sample of the requested stamp of the Rectorate of Kaunas Mohammedan Parish, 31 October 1923 192 8.2 Kaunas Muslim Society’s stamp, on a document dated 9 September 1937 192 Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> chapter 1 Introduction: Towards a Trans-Cultural History of Muslims in Interwar Europe Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid The study of Muslims in interwar Europe is a rising and intriguing field of research. With the exception of two edited volumes, Islam in Interwar Europe by Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain and Transnational Islam in Interwar Europe by Götz Nordbruch and Umar Ryad,1 the history of Muslims in Europe during this period is still fragmented into various fields of study as a side aspect of other issues. Some of these works deal with Muslims in interwar Europe as part of Middle Eastern and Asian history, colonial studies or briefly as related to European migration history.2 Other historians deliver nationally focused narratives of the Muslim presence in western, central, and eastern European territories focused on specific countries, framed within a national history.3 1 Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (eds.), Islam in Interwar Europe (London: Hurst & Company, 2008); Götz Nordbruch and Umar Ryad (eds.), Transnational Islam in Interwar Europe: Muslim Activists and Thinkers (New York: Palgrave, 2014). 2 See, for example, Martin Seth Kramer, Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival: The Politics of Ideas in the Middle East (New Brunswick, nj: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 103–111; William L. Cleveland, Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2014): Juliette Bessis, “Chekib Arslan et les mouvements nationalistes au Maghreb,” Revue historique 526 (1978): 467–489; Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Hisao Komatsu, and Yasushi Kosugi, Intellectuals in the Modern Islamic World: Transmission, Transformation, Communication (London: Taylor & Francis, 2006); Manuela Williams, Mussoliniʼs Propaganda Abroad: Subversion in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, 1935–1940 (New York: Routledge, 2006); Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (London: Saqi, 2010). 3 See, for example, Alexandre Popovic, L’Islam balkanique: Les musulmans du sud-esteuropéendans la périodepost-ottomane (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1986); Alexandre Popovic, The Turks of Bulgaria (1878–1985) (Society for Central Asian Studies, 1986); Nathalie Clayer, “La Ahmadiyya lahori et la réforme de l’islam albanais dans l’entre-deux-guerres, in Véronique Bouillier & Catherine Servan-Schreiber,” De l’Arabie à l’Himalaya. Chemins croisés en hommage à Marc Gaborieau (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2004), 211–228; Humayun Ansari (ed.), The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951 (Cambridge University Press, 2011); Humayun Ansari, “Between Collaboration and Resistance: Muslim Soldiers’ Identities and Loyalties in the two World Wars,” Arches Quarterly 4 (2011): 18–29; Humayun Ansari, “ʽBurying the Deadʼ: Making Muslim Space in Britain,” Historical Research 80/210 (2007): 545–566; Humayun Ansari, “The © bekim agai, umar ryad and mehdi sajid, ���6 | doi �0.��63/978900430�979_00� This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC 3.0) License.Bekim Agai, Umar Ryad and Mehdi Sajid - 978-90-04-30197-9 Downloaded from Brill.com06/04/2020 11:30:13AM via free access <UN> 2 Agai, Ryad and Sajid Figure 1.1 European Muslim Congress, 1935. Family Archive, Mohammed Ali van Beetem; Naaldwijk – The Netherlands. With gratitude to his grandson for giving access to the papers The present volume puts the trans-cultural perspective on Muslims in interwar Europe into focus. It is the outcome of an international symposium entitled “Islam in Interwar Europe and European Cultural History,” which was held at Leiden University (13–14 December 2012). It was organized by the three editors Woking Mosque: A Case Study of Muslim Engagement with British Society since 1889,” Immigrants & Minorities 21/3 (2002), 1–24.